Bollingers bring unique new business to Brunswick

Mark and Debbie Bollinger opened Bollinger Funeral Goods and Services in November. The couple hopes to offer customers more options - and lower prices - on funeral planning.BRIAN LISIK/SUN NEWS

On one of his first dates with his future wife, Mark Bollinger received the kind of phone call tailor made for a reality television show.

“He got a call from the hospital – they needed a body picked up,” Debbie Bollinger said of the licensed funeral director and embalmer who would eventually be her husband. “He asked if I wanted to come along, and I thought why not.”

The somewhat unusual night out was the start of a personal and professional relationship that has led the Bollingers to the opening of Bollinger Funeral Goods and Services, on Center Road in the Kmart Plaza.

A third-generation funeral director, Mark sold the Cleveland-based family business in the early 1990s, going on to work for a number of other companies. An introduction to representatives from the Columbus-based Pine Box Agency sparked the original idea for the business.

“The cost of funerals is just ridiculous,” Mark said, noting that the average funeral nationwide is roughly $10,000. “When you see people having to hold fundraisers to pay for a funeral, something is inherently wrong.”

Without the overhead of maintaining a building that is opened for, on average, 100 funerals per year, a company like Bollinger’s espouses to offer options, both in terms of finances and funeral planning itself.

“We are encouraging people to think outside the box, if you will,” Mark said – pun fully intended. “A lot of people are starting to have memorial services anyway and we can offer having the visitation at their church, or the local Eagles club, or a place like Skyview Lodge.”

The business plan will enable Bollinger to serve people throughout Northeast Ohio, not just within local confines.

He added that while his primary competition is funeral homes, relationships he has fostered in his 27 years in the business also allow him to offer his customers more traditional viewing at area funeral homes as well.

The store carries a line of caskets as well as outer burial containers, headstones, monuments, and other funeral and cremation merchandise, including pet remembrance items.

The key difference, Debbie said, is affordability and mobility.

“Other than the fact that we have lived in Brunswick for 17 years, this is a prime location,” she said. “With the close proximately to the highways people can get to us easily, and we will go to them as well.”

The biggest difference, Mark said, remains the price. He estimates that families can save as much as 75-percent of a funeral bill when using Bollinger Funeral Goods’ services.

“The last funeral home I worked for, they were doing so much — you get this and that regardless of whether you want it or not,” he said. “We have stripped it down to where you can do what you want, and if there is something you don’t want to do, you don’t have to.”

Which, in the end can make all the difference during one of the most painful times in a person’s life.

“It’s not a typical business where people come in and shop, though there are more people pre-planning,” she said. “But those who have stopped in say they like the idea.”

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